Paint stripping a 125
Background
Jet Engineering Technical Support (JETS), was established in October 2004 to offer maintenance to business customers in in Europe initially on the Hawker 125. Since then they have expanded their capabilities to include the Bombardier Challenger and Dornier 328 Prop and Jet series. Their maintenance centre is now based in Bournemouth in Southern England and following their recent acquisition of a new hanger allowed them to create a new dedicated paint bay and allow their customers to have their aircraft painted during their routine maintenance input. A real one-stop-shop.
JETS paint activity is lead by Tony Purvis, who has over 30 years experience in aircraft painting and his highly experienced team. It is with extreme thanks to them and especially their colleague Mark Shepherd for all his help with the text and all the photographs are by Mark and are copyright to him and Jet Engineering Technical Support.
The stripping process.
First of all is the masking process. The first pictures show this stage just before completing.
The sections covered in polythene are made of composite materials and will be rubbed down rather than stripped.
The aircraft is then jacked up ready for the stripping process. The stripper is then applied starting at the fuselage front end and part of the under section.
This close up shows how thick and nasty the stripper is. What the pictures don't do justice is the smell it is awful. Its is very difficult to breath in so these photo were taken with a full gas mask on.
The aircraft now almost completely covered in stripper ,just the back end to be done
The stripper and paint are then washed off over a weekend.
The aircraft is de-masked and taken off jacks.
Finally the aircraft is ready to be re-painted